WISN 12 News' Portia Young explains how they got started along with the company that's made in Wisconsin.

The sizzle at the ball park and the five beloved characters who race there during every game all began with three brothers on Milwaukee's south side.

"The three brothers, Jack, George and Ron, actually started Klement's and formed it together. One was the sausage-maker. One was the finance person. The other was the sales person," Klement's Executive Vice President Jack Belke said.

Belke is the head sales person.

"The work that's behind us, that meat is less than one day old. That's how fresh it is," Belke said.

Bratwurst is the most popular of Klement's sausages. About 900,000 are sold at Miller Park every year.

"Well, Wisconsin is the single largest consumer of sausage in the nation," Belke said.Belke said at one point, in 20th Century Milwaukee, there were 37 different sausage makers.

"Today, there's basically just two of us. There's Klement's and there's Usinger's," he said.

What has helped Klement's last since 1956, and reach all 50 states, is what Belke calls its Old World charm, and few things are more charming than the the world famous Klement's Racing Sausages.

"They started out very, very humbly back around 1990 when they were simply on Sundays put on the Jumbotron, and they did a Jumbotron race," Belke said.

Belke said the idea of racing sausages was a collaborative effort after someone from Klement's went to a Minnesota Twins game and saw two racing tires on the big screen.

"And after a good amount of politicking with the owner, who is now the commissioner of baseball, we finally convinced him that in between the innings one day a week, we'd be able to do it," Belke said,

The rest is history.

The Klement's Racing Sausages really are world famous, becoming the third-most popular mascots in all of sports, according to Belke.

"When you see the look on the kids' faces when the sausage races are around it's incredible. I think that resonates with families throughout the community," Belk said.

The racing sausages started out with just three: The brat, the Italian and the Polish, just like the three Klements' brothers.

Klement's is still on Milwaukee's south side at Lincoln Avenue and Austin Street, where the three brothers set up shop in the 1950s. The site is now houses the administrative offices and ready-to-eat food.

A facility on Chase Avenue, handles the raw product. Five hundred people work there making tens of millions of sausages every year.

The racing sausages are so famous that Major League Baseball now owns the rights to them.

Klement's is still family-owned by second- and third-generation family members.